摘要
this descriptive study was carried out at the hospital sˋo paulo aiming nursing staff dimension of the hospitalization units of this institution. data collect was performed in 2002, in the 40 hospitalization units in which patientˋs classification and non anticipated absences of the nursing staff of the previous year were studied, applying the staff dimensioning calculation proposed by gaidzinski(1). the main conclusions were regarding levels of complexity of the nursing care, the hospitalized patients demanded minimum care of nursing (30.8%) followed by intermediary care (27.5%), high dependence care (22.0%), intensive care (12%) and semi-intensive care (7.6%). time of nursing assistance for the classified patients was greater for intensive care (30.9%) followed by high dependence (21.8%), intermediary (21.2%), minimum (15.3%) and semi-intensive (10.7%). almost 50.0% of the non-anticipated absences were due to maternity permissions and those of nursing technicians/assistants and others were homogeneous as no show at work, medical authorization, maternity permission and others. the comparison between the nursing staff in the hospital sˋo paulo and the calculated according to the gaidzinski model showed a need of 76 nurses and superlative of 97 nursing technician/assistants.